T. V. Raman:Comments On UA Guidelines

Section 1

I'm a little confused by the usage of words like must in the introduction section of the document. For example, here is a specific example:
Communication through standard interfaces is particularly important for graphical desktop browsers, which must make information available to assistive technologies.
Do you really intend must to mean need to in the above? Stylistically (and perhaps even grammatically) I'd nuke the comma and change which to that in addition to changing must to need to. Also, the following statement --which appears numerous times-- makes no sense to me:
o Links to definitions are highlighted through the use of style sheets.
The offending phrase is through the use of style sheets. The user reading the document can tell that something is highlighted --how does one know (or why should one care) that it is done through the use of stylesheets?

Section 2

Guideline 2

Nit:word closed is repeated in:
of closed closed captions (or subtitles) available (e.g., in

Guideline 3:

In 3.7, the statement
Users should be able, for security reasons, to prevent scripts from executing on their machines.
though factually true has nothing to do with accessibility --especially the way it is tacked on to the bit about avoiding flicker.

Guideline 4

Ensure that the user has control over the colors, text size, speech rate and pitch, and other stylistic aspects of a resource and can override author styles and user agent default styles.

Sentence too long --looks like a lawyer wrote it. Split it into two sentences so the second half --the bit about user control-- doesn't get lost.

4.2 Controlling Font Size And Style

For example, allow the user to control font size through style sheets or the user interface.

Phrase or the user interface in the sentence above makes no sense in the presence of the preceding stylesheets reference in the same sentence --especially since it is written as stylesheets or user interface. What is the intent here? If the guideline is trying to say allow the user to load a custom stylesheet --or alternatively, specify a font family and style directly through the UA's user interface-- the checkpoint should just say that in as many words.

Guideline 5

This sentence looks malformed --it appears to have head nor tail.
Communicate with other software (assistive technologies, the operating system, plug-ins) through applicable interfaces and observe conventions for the user interface, documentation, installation, etc.

5.6

User agents should export these interfaces using available operating system conventions. Note. The DOM Level 1 specification states that "DOM applications may provide additional interfaces and objects not found in this specification and still be considered DOM compliant."

Why should the operating system be involved in the DOM? Also, the note that is tacked on to the sentence in question looks out of context.


Email: T. V. Raman
Last modified: Mon Nov 29 13:02:12 1999